


it's something of a peril of the job

by suitablyskippy



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Detective Noir, F/F, Hardboiled Fiction, teetering lovingly on the line between parody and homage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-08
Updated: 2013-01-08
Packaged: 2017-11-24 03:16:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/629752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/suitablyskippy/pseuds/suitablyskippy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You need a new whisk, you need a lot of life insurance, you need a vacation, you need a home in the country. What you have is a coat, a hat, and a spork. You put them on and go out of the room.</p>
<p>- Philip Marlowe (or close enough)</p>
            </blockquote>





	it's something of a peril of the job

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ryo Hoshi (Hoshi_Ryo)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hoshi_Ryo/gifts).



> for the prompt: hardboiled detective jane, with all the tropes of the genre genderbent - ingénue jake, femme fatale dirk, etc. jane and roxy BFFs through all of it!
> 
> (if you think youve already spotted at least two loving shoutouts to raymond chandler in this, youre right. it goes on.)

Buena vista madame i heard you were the dame with the deets on disappearances. 

That depends, you say, and you tip your cat’s eye specs to level him a look as stony as the grimy outer walls of your rough-bricked walk-up. The gent’s in shorts shorter than you’re already sensing your patience with his manner of speech will be; he’s owner of a jawline that’s stubbled like moss on a rock and there’s not a sleeve on his jade-green shirt to speak of. And I suspect you mean ‘buenos dios’. 

All greek to me, he says. His cheer is as believably sturdy as toffee brittle. He rumples his pre-rumpled hair and he then resumes pacing before your desk, his hands tucked tight in his armpits. Look the matter is you see that my main dolls gone awol. 

And by ‘AWOL’ you mean to indicate what, precisely? 

Skedaddled. Vamoosed. I hastened homewards from work this morn and shed buggered straight up and out my life! 

Excuse me a moment. You flip the lid on your ‘stache stash. When deduction time comes a pencil moustache just doesn’t cut it: you peel off the pencil and seal on a droop-tailed Fu Manchu throwback. Pardon my presumption, you say, and twiddle one end, but have you considered the possibility this dame may simply have had it to here with what your tan lines tell me is your regular semi-nudity? 

Presumption excused i entertained similar notions myself in fact. But heres the kicker miss crocker –

Just Crocker. 

Righto, he says, as anxious as a puppy in a tumbledryer, and you switch out the trailing Fu Manchu masterpiece for a good solid handlebar. Thing is she left her cat and shes had that lil guy since her salad days. And if i know rox which i do then i know shed never run off without him. Rox is the dame in question btw. Roxy lalonde. 

And how does the state know you? 

Oh im jake. 

Yes? 

Huh? 

You fish out your flask from its drawer and knock back one short hard snifter of the drink within: Mayan hot chocolate. A gift from a satisfied client. A broken vase, a broken heart, a shootout in an alley at dawn as the day’s first sirens wailed down the boulevard. You’ve got a past and the knickknacks to prove it. 

You wipe your mouth on your cuff and glower as he quails. Jake _what_ , you say. 

Oh heck, he says. 

He’s Jake English and he shares an apartment with the elusive Ms Roxy Lalonde; down on the docks at the Blue Tailed Cat he plays trumpet and she’s the inhouse cocktail mixologist. He chews his cheek and adds they’re ‘ofttimes entertainment’, so you raise an eyebrow and note that they’re ‘dancers, possibly exotic’. Hoo! you say. A physical description, perhaps? 

Lalonde is fair from top to toe and skinny round the knees, last sighted with a glossy plastic handbag big enough to fit a postcard, if you folded it, and clad in a hot pink minidress. To hereabouts, says English, and gestures vaguely to the tops of his bare and hairy thighs. Brassiere in black lace based on last nights floor show but maybe she changed it im not altogether sure how that stuff works. 

I’ve enough to be getting on with, you say. You flip your notepad shut. Your client gazes on with wide round eyes: you’d spot him for a sucker from a distance of fifty feet and a standing start, and you don’t imagine he’ll ever fully form a thought without a sense of pride. I’ll take the case. 

Oh boy oh boy thank you im gonna owe you big time!! Ill cash in the family jewels and thats sure not a euphemism hehe. 

You need a new whisk, you need a lot of life insurance, you need a vacation, you need a home in the country. What you have is a coat, a hat, and a spork. You put them on and go out of the room. 

\---

Harley called. 

You gave her my hours? 

You got hours, boss? Your secretary reclines at his desk, pale hair teased upwards like vanilla whip, and he slips off shades so sharp you’ve seen them slit a man’s neck wide open. I told her you’ll sleep when the city sleeps, and she should call by whenever she’s hit with the urge. And perhaps you’ll be in, and perhaps you won’t, but perhaps me and her can have a little chat about this robotics racket all the same. 

Precisely, you say, and you wriggle your lip to adjust the walrus moustache tacked on there. I want your conversations on tape and at my door the moment Harley’s out of here. 

Sure, he says. He lowers his lashes and raises them again; he’s got a stare as hard as a blow to the head, and just as dizzying. Your client’s dark eyebrows waggle in agitation like disco-dancing gerbils. I’d tell you to correct me if I’m wrong, but I ain’t never been wrong before and fuck if I’m starting now. I’ve seen you on the docks, dude. 

Uh i beg your pardon? 

You were jazzing it up a little more, and wearing a little less, but it was you for sure. Faces like yours stick in the memory, and then they move right on to the imagination. 

Im sure i dont know what youre rattling on about mister! 

Yeah, you do. Keeping some pretty sleazy company today, Crocker. 

Oh, knock it off, Strider! I’ve a case here that’s hot to be handled. 

And a dame at the end of it you’re hoping will be much the same? 

You’re being willfully coarse, you chide, and he smiles like a cake rising, scorching hot and slow and delicious. 

Yipes, says your client. 

For goodness’ sake, you say. Your secretary seduces faster than he files, and you’d give him the boot if you thought you’d ever find a honeytrap so organized again. I’ll be back when I’m back. Screen my calls, don’t wait up! 

Never would, he says, but he always does. 

\---

You’re familiar with boarded windows, cracked sidewalks, teetering front yard fences and scrub burned away under a sun that couldn’t give two hoots. You’re well versed in the melody of violence: the chorus is a steel spoon to the skull and the first verse is one swift sharp stab of a fork to the guts, with your spring-loaded knifestache an optional refrain. You’ve seen men suffer in ways you wish you hadn’t; you’ve made men suffer in ways _they_ wish you hadn’t. 

You’re Crocker, and you’re one tough cookie. 

But you’ve never seen anything quite like English’s apartment. 

It belongs in the line-up of narrow city rent-outs like a garlic bulb belongs on a pavlova, peeling and paint-spattered in a row of whitewashed urban dreams. One window is smeared with a bright blue stain and the other fronts an impenetrable sprawl of greenery, vines pressed up and twisted against the glass. You cup your hands to the window and squint into the dim interior like a soothsayer into goat guts. You don’t see the future and you don’t see the room either. 

English unlocks the front door. After you, he says. 

After _you_ , you correct, and you follow him in with one hand on your spork. 

The heat inside is dense and muggy, clinging relentlessly close. Tangles of plants spill out and coil up along the edges of the hallway; occasional flowers stud the scene, white and soft like a corpse in a ditch and smelling much the same. English starts to whistle but the tune weakens and dies, as though whistled by a man abruptly remembering the mysterious disappearance of his roommate. You’re not sure Lalonde has even left: a woman could take a wrong turn in this jungle and be gone for weeks. You wonder how she stands it. 

Every radiator you pass is turned up so high the heat hits you like a blackjack to the kneecap. Let’s get this over with, you say, in a voice made whiny by your pinched-shut nose. Show me her bedroom. 

The visuals that stay with you: three shelves stacked entirely with insect repellant; a bed big enough for softball with a mosquito net like the string vest of some vast god; a black cat moving across the vivid pink rug towards you in a kind of lithe undulation. 

Youll like this one miss crocker. 

You take a calming breath as deep as the shit you’re going to land him in if he calls you ‘Miss Crocker’ one more time. 

Im always saying how its kinda ironic rox has a black cat when our workplace is about blue cats instead!!! 

Mister, that’s not ironic in the slightest. 

You ditch the dope. You’re going to find this girl, and you’re going to do it alone. 

\---

There’s a breeze blowing from the sea tonight. It’s one of those clammy, brackish ocean winds that careen into town across the waves and make your glasses fog, make your skin gritty with its salt, make the streets shine hard and wet below it. You go alone through the cobbled dockside alleys with your hands deep in your pockets and your spork tight in your hand, sideburn ‘stache warming your cheeks and fedora pulled down low. 

This Christmas, Strider made you cookie cutters shaped like horses’ heads. It’s March. You’ve still never used them. The time since you last relaxed is the same as the time since you last got knocked unconscious. You stand outside the Blue Tailed Cat with your arms akimbo and you don’t think about how badly you want to get slugged out again, just so you could nab a little rest. 

An exotic brunet parked on his keister in a giant martini glass beckons at you through a pane of smeared glass, and as you watch he kicks his feet in the dimness like he’s going for a record in the fifty meter crawl. Neon blue flashes GIRLS G RLS GIR S down one side of his window and BOYS BOYS BO S down the other, and above it all THE BLUE TAILED CAT is spelt out in a squat black script lit up with fairy lights. 

It smells like trouble and fishing boats and booze. It looks like trouble and rent paid late every month and booze. You’ve never been partial to the gin-mills. 

But there’s nothing they hold that could shock you: you know what you want tonight, and you’re going to get it and go. You swing back the doors like a cowboy in a circle skirt and enter the club. 

The lights dazzle and so do the punters. At the bar there’s a lady in a feathered headdress half her height again, men swarming about her like a clutch of kittens nuzzling a sabretoothed tiger. There’s a gent wrestling down a gent’s sequinned pants at a table below the stage. It’s the kind of joint where you suspect a dying man could scream for hours but coppers are coming!! is the only scream its patrons would react to. On stage a statuesque blond fellow revolves like a well-socketed joint and the crowd roars with laughter. 

You wind a path through them like ribbon in a magician’s hands. 

At the bar, she sidles up to you with a glass on a platter and a wink. u fancy sittin down 4 a moment? 

Perhaps, you say. If you fancy telling me to whom I have the pleasure of speaking. 

i thought u were the private eye round here, she says. Her voice is as silvery smooth as her hair gleams in the halogen lights of the bar. or mayyybe yr not the gal i thought u were?? 

Oh, I have my suspicions. Take my word for it, Ms Bartender. 

When she smiles it’s like watching the sun rise across America after keeping a six hour vigil for it on a grimy redeye flight across timezones. You feel dizzy with tiredness; or with something, at least. i prefer mixolologist, she tells you. She curls your fingers round the cool stem of the glass she brought you, liquid glittering blue as the lights outside and just as legally dubious. wontcha take a seat??? ;) ;) 

You cock an eyebrow like a gun. I’m flattered, I’m sure, but you know full well I’m here on business. And I believe in keeping my business and my pleasure firmly separated. 

i bet u aint never even tried 2 mix em w/ each other, i do it every night & its fuckin BALLER

Her lingo is the lingo of the streets: she’s the real gold coin in a dollar-store sack of chocolate ones. Your gaze thumbs a ride and travels of its own accord, down hips like jauntily stacked coathangers and legs like convicts on the run: once they start going, they don’t stop for miles. 

You seem awfully confident that my spending time with you would comprise the pleasurable part of this concoction. 

ohhh im a professional mixololologist, wen it comes 2 concoctions u can take my word 4 it ;) 

What the strategic fringing of her dress leaves to your imagination, your imagination is more than happy to fill in. 

Hoo! In which case, I suspect that – were I to conduct my business thoroughly – the pleasure of your company may be inevitable. As I suspect the purpose of my business here is, in fact, _you_. 

situational inexorabilitys a bitch sometimes, dont u reckon janey? 

Sure, you say, and you’re darn certain you’ve got your girl. Sure it is, Roxy. 

She holds your gaze like the scalding brim of a saucepan just off the boil. You see the way she’s wincing but you also see the way she sets her teeth and bears it: she’s a real dish of a girl, and she’s wasted on a dimwit like the one she’s shacked up with. 

Take a seat, you say, finally, and she exhales a whole gale through her teeth. 

ok look this whole thing w/ me bein reported missing wen im clearly right here is totes explicable    
if u jst give me like    
2 mins 

To get your story straight? 

omg NO detective, i have literally 0 to hide here   
zero zilch nada   
im jst gonna knock back a quick 1 ok???    
one speedy snort of gin maybz   
get my courage up & RARING 2 GO

Oh, if you have nothing to hide then I’m sure that won’t be necessary! You park your behind in a red leather booth seat. She folds herself down beside you and the action is like a masterpiece of underdressed origami. Now. Tell me what’s going on here, and make it convincing. I may have a nose for fibs, but the cops have handcuffs for them. 

*siiiiiiiigh*   
ok well   
jake sent u am i right?? 

You peel off your sideburns and paste on a neatly curled Dali monstrosity. He presented the case for my perusal, you tell her, and I chose to take it up. 

no but i mean   
u met him right?????? 

Regrettably. 

Her laughter is an unmusical tinkle, like a cat running over piano keys. She may just be the most graceless broad you’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting, and you find you’re scouring the club for fear her roommate shows up. 

then u know what i mean wen i say   
i needed some me time   
needed a dollop o/ rox time   
more specifically i needed a babe 2 come & interrupt it w/ some hardboiled qu.s and her dashin ‘stache 

Ms Lalonde –

nuh uh!!!!    
u already called me rox 1 time, u got to stick w/ it now   
this shits got rules & youre gunna play by em missy

Roxy, then. 

aw yesss thats more like it :D 

Are you saying you anticipated Mister English’s visit to my office? 

lol yeah, says Roxy. She swipes back one brazen curl of hair and leans in till you smell her perfume: dark and strong, and cheap as any sweet girl standing streetside at sundown. 

You wrap the tip of your moustache around your finger and let it sproing loose again. It’s been a long time since what you felt was nerves. Well?? 

ive seen u on the news a couple times    
soundin tough as hell & lookin fly as heaven   
so i hopped on down 2 the kitchen of love & cooked me up a PLAN   
yesterday i told jake id never go anywhere w/out chrestomanci   
(thats my cat btw hes a fuckin cutie)    
then i happened 2 casually mention the best private dick in the city was PI janey crocker   
esteemed wearer of stylin moustachios   
& general piece o/ hot stuff   
next day i went out & left chresto at home   
left a crocker style business card in the kitchen

She unfurls your fingers from your glass and takes a sip and sighs, and shakes her head at you with half a smile. It gives you half a coronary. You fumble your notepad from its pocket and a pen from another, and click it like you know what’s going on. 

thats literally it, she says, before you can speak. like u rly dont have 2 try that hard if u wanna trick jakey

You absconded from your home so that I would come after you? 

yep

That’s – You hardly know what it is. You thought your trench coat was armor against this kind of utter nonsense. That’s completely absurd! 

sez the chick w/ an inside pocket full of fake moustaches

They are vital to my line of work!!! 

jesus fuck i think i love u

Her mouth just misses yours so she drops the glass and tries again. This time she makes it. One cool hand curls round the back of your neck to pull you closer and you have a funny feeling, as though you waited in spitting rain for a bus that didn’t show so you caught the tram instead, and now you’re trundling past the folk still on the bus stop, and rain is dripping from the brim of your fedora but it’s warm and bright inside the tram and you hardly mind the weather at all. Ahh, you say. 

She teases the black taper of hair at the sweet crook of your skull and your neck and you melt into her like baked Alaska in a microwave. 

Whoa back up one sec what in the name of jumping jesus joseph and mary is going on here!!! 

The kiss breaks up with a damp little smack. Your client moves indecisively from foot to foot, skulking at the entrance to your booth in short satin shorts that glimmer green under the club lights. 

Well, you say, would you look at that! I seem to have successfully located your roommate. 

omg try harder janey, i located YOU

Im not quite following. 

You asked me to find your main doll, Mister English, and here she is. Case closed! 

Well sure i dig THAT bit. And i mean im over the moon to see you safe and sound rox dont get me wrong! But i cant help feeling theres maybe some....... threads left untied?? 

aw dont worry jake im safe and sound   
aint been sounder in a while tbh

No thats not it. The lights wash over him with an underwater blue. He’s bugging out his eyes at you like a dog passing wind, but you’re a sleuth in your blood and your bones and your streetworn brown leather loafers and you know fear when it curls your lip like this: he wants to pass a message. 

You prise off the Dali and replace it with a heavy brown horseshoe moustache. You solved his case and, frankly, you don’t give a damn. 

Would you care to join me in a jive, Ms Lalonde? 

oh it would be an HONOR ms crocker

Hang up crocker i need to tell you something!! 

On the... _far_ side of the club, perhaps? 

a 100% delightful plan milady

Your secretarys been hot on my tail all day its incredibly disconcerting!!! 

She twines her fingers through yours. You squeeze. She squeezes back. It’s not that your words fail you but just that, in this moment, you exchange them for the warmth of a lady’s hand. 

I suspect he may have rigged my dressing room though for the life of me i couldnt rightly articulate the fears i have of what hes rigged it with!!!! 

The club has a smell of spilled drink and vomit and the sweat of a hundred frantic moving bodies, all fomenting at once in a dingy pit with carpet as stickily furred as a hangover mouth. Two pale robust showboys swing decorative tassels and leer down from the stage. The city is big and grubby and tends to the sordid but you’ve got a love for it like – 

Roxy kisses you, gently. 

you can monologue later hun i promise    
but how about right now u dance w/ me? 

Oh heck, was I at it again? 

sure were

I’m awfully sorry, Roxy. It’s something of a peril of the job! 

oh hushhh dont even worry abt it   
u kno im crazy 4 this whole hardboiled schtick ;) 

You jive to the morning, fuelled by sheer adoration.


End file.
